Finding Place
My youngest daughter keeps asking me if we can get another pet. A French bulldog, to be exact. If that doesn’t work, she says she’ll settle for a kitten or a bunny, something small enough to fit on her lap, unlike our 115lb giant breed mountain dog. My answer to her question is always the same. NO. To which she always responds, BUT WHY? And my answer to that is also always the same. Because I can’t possibly keep up with one more thing. Which really means, I can’t be tasked with keeping one more thing alive.
This is why the very thought of starting an email newsletter has given me heartburn. I fear I won’t be able to keep it alive and thriving over any extended period of time. I was plagued by a similar fear when I worked as a nurse, taking care of human patients with acute health conditions. Knowing that what I did or didn’t do could directly impact the mortality of another person terrified and motivated and lured me all at the same time.
I have to remind myself that this isn’t that. This isn’t oxygen or blood. This isn’t physical life or death. This is just words on a page. This is language. This can be playful and fun and expressive! Only, now I’m contradicting myself. Aren’t words and language like oxygen and blood to us? Perhaps not medically, but words and stories are very real sources of life, often when few other things are. Sometimes words mean the difference between life and death. And, I suppose this is why I write, and why I keep writing, and why I’m here, writing this, despite my fear of exposure or overwhelm or incompetence or adding one more thing to someone else’s life or mine. Words, for me, are life-giving and life-sustaining.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the beach, lulled by the waves, flipping the pages of my book in that low-power-mode kind of way, when I came across a quote that made my soul cry YES YES YES. My whole being perked up. I can’t think of a better way to express my passion for poems and personal narrative and the power of language in my life.
The book is Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson, the deliciously dark, witty, and gritty memoir I’m currently reading. The book centers on themes of orphanhood, the fallout of a fundamentalist evangelical upbringing, the precariousness of a developing sexuality in said evangelical upbringing, the intensity of mother-daughter relationships, and a fervent thirst for love despite the ways it’s been twisted toward violence. Basically, all of the themes I love in a book are in this one. Amidst Winterson’s childhood trauma, words and stories are what save her. They are the place she ultimately finds herself.
So, with that said, this monthly newsletter, Bodies of Thought, will contain meandering fragments of thoughts and reflections held together by the ligaments of language and its power to inspire, connect, question, provoke, heal, transform, and delight. Each offering will include some blend of writing-life lessons, reading suggestions, craft ideas, creative prompts, and/or book reviews. I will also reference any recent publications, upcoming projects, or creative writing workshops I’m teaching! I hope it will be a fun and informative resource for writers or readers or humans at any stage of the journey and in any genre of expression. I hope it will breathe depth, whimsy, and hope into our rapid-paced and shallow-breathed lives. I hope it will be like a little beat of life itself.